


The Hard Truths

by Tammany



Series: Sam and Crowley [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Light Sadism, M/M, Mutual pain-play, Pain, Painplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 09:31:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6512788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not as graphic as all that, but it is important to say going in that it's about two people who are quite possibly unable to enjoy sex without an edge of pain...and the core of the story is about them finding a way to live with that and still find something warmer, and more tender and secure.</p><p>Here's the thing: we know Crowley's got his kink, and appears to have always. And as oblique as Supernatural has been there is still virtually no doubt at all what Lucifer put Sam though: the hints have been short of explicity, but not far short. And that went on forever and all...Pavlovian conditioning and training by the master demon of all demons.</p><p>But both characters are shown as needing, desperately, something beyond that. I am mucking around in some sense trying to see if I think it could work--or just go horrible as hell. Right now I think it might work...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hard Truths

t has been weeks since Moose dragged the two of them back to the Men of Letters’ lair.

Crowley can move again. Think again.

He’s human again.

All human.

It’s yet another thing not to think about. Especially here. Especially now. Especially stuck with Gigantor as his only companion. He and the Moose have history, and neither of them likes to think about it much. Especially not now, in the lonely bunker, echoing with ghosts and memories.

There are still Dean’s frozen pies in the freezer.

Kevin’s memory lingers, like a rare and precious scent.

Sometimes Crowley wakes up in the middle of the night, tears on his cheeks, crying everyone deserves to be loved.

Sometimes he wakes remembering the feel of blood—Sam’s blood—coursing in his veins.

History.

Crowley minds his own business as best he can, given he has no business and is fairly sure he’s losing his mind. He’s taken to reading old mission reports of the Men of Letters to stave off death by boredom. Even more recently he began cleaning the lair. Who knew Dean was the neat-nik? But, then Sam’s buried in research, which he refuses to discuss.

“How about I make faggots and mash for dinner tonight?” Crowley says.

“Hmmm…wha’?” Sam looks up at that one, frowning. “Faggots?”

Crowley huffs. “Meatballs, you lack-wit. Ground meat. ‘Taties. Food.”

“Ah.” Sam nods, looking blank, then shrugs. “Whatever.”

Crowley swears and disappears into the kitchen to dredge meat out of the freezer and potatoes out of the bins. They’re running low, he thinks. At some point Sam is going to have to take them to town to shop.

He doesn’t bother thinking he could escape, then. He’s human, not demon, and too many of his enemies are angels or devils or worse. He is flesh and blood and fear and fragility, with only his wit and several hundred years of mage-craft standing between him and people who know how to make “fate worse than death” a profoundly meaningful statement of fact. No—he’s safer hidden in the sigil-protected lair.

He was running out of clothes after the first few days. In the end he broke into old lockers and storage rooms, until he found at least a few suits in his size. Old boxer shorts—roomy and quaint. Fedora hats. Pointy-toed wing-tip shoes. It takes a few days for him to decide he likes the style—but he’s secretly hooked. He winks at himself in the mirror of his room. He tips the fedora at a jaunty angle, pretending he’s wearing it for some reason beyond vanity and boredom. A hot date, he thinks—rooty-toot-toot. Jazz in a speakeasy, maybe.

He remembers those days. Back then he was the Crossroads Demon. THE Crossroads Demon. There were a lot of jazz men and torch singers who knew what you did if you wanted to be the best. Deal with the devil… Some people collected vinyl. Crowley? He’d collected souls, rich and glorious, tasting of bootleg and blues.

It had been a good time, he thought, longing for it.

In the kitchen he took off the nice jackets and the tidy waistcoats, folded them, and tied on an apron. He’d lived as a poor tailor too long not to know how to cook faggots and mash.  He made the faggots long, sausage-shaped, and thought dirty thoughts, singing under his breath as he worked. He remembered the shiver of silk fringe over slim thighs, the crisp center-crease of best-tailored suits, the shine of shoes under the lights of the speakeasies. He remembered all sorts landing in his bed in those years. All sexes. All colors. All ages. All tastes. Good times, and no damned conscience to screw it up, and no damned knowledge of Winchesters to color it all in grief.

“Still no word of Dean,” Sam said, leaning in the door of the little kitchen, arms crossed, watching Crowley work. His eyes laughed when Crowley jumped and swore…and he made no effort to hide it, which angered the former demon further. “No word of Dean. No word of Cas. Can’t contact Heaven. Hell’s still empty.”

Crowley grunted and pretended the knowledge didn’t shake him. “They’ll show up. Bad pennies.”

He hadn’t told Sam he was human. Again—history.

He was almost sure Sam had guessed anyway. The doubt rattled his nerve.

“These just cook about half an hour while the onions go soft,” he said. “Then I make the gravy and we can eat.”

Sam nodded, brooding. But then, that was the Jolly Green for you—brooding like Byron. “How are you feeling?”

Crowley didn’t look up from the fry-pan. “The bones, you mean? Still sore. I’m using a cane some of the time.”

Actually, he wasn’t. He’d used some of the magic he knew to speed the healing. Not enough to raise suspicions, but it had been a chance to make sure he was still good at something.

“Have you been…” Moose was uneasy. “You’re all right, then? Keeping busy? Not having any trouble?”

“You’ve been the perfect host,” Crowley snapped, letting his eternal frustrations with Moose mingle with weeks of solitary moping around the hidden sanctuary. “It’s been the time of my life.” He rolls his eyes, and growls when he realizes Moose has gone all conscience-ridden and intense. “Fucking hell, what is it with you? Can’t you just hate me in peace, and leave it at that?”

Sam shrugged, and gave something half-way between a grin and a grimace. “Not my talent.”

No. That had been Dean’s talent, and even Dean failed at it some of the time: the Winchester weakness for caring. But Dean, in the end, had never brooded over Crowley. It was the other way around—Crowley, now, could just barely admit through gritted teeth that there were times he’d brooded over Dean. As for the Moose…

He chose never to think about the Moose if he could help it.

(“Everyone deserves to be loved,” he heard himself cry, and watched Sam fight to give up his life, give one more injection, to save Crowley from his demonic damnation…)

(He curled, a red phantasm, inside Moose’s mind, forcing out Gadreel…and feeling all the subtle, tender, aching feelings woven through Sam Winchester’s mind. Tender things no demon had time for, much less Crowley, King of Demons…)

He turned back to the stove. “I’m fine,” he said. “Catching up on my reading.”

Sam came in, hovered too close, his breathing near enough to hear, his body near enough to smell. Crowley felt anger and need and insecurity and hated-hated-hated it and Moose and with his temper raging turned and grabbed Moose’s shirtfront and shook him like a terrier shakes a rat and growled, “Get back, or sod-all I will make you wish you had.”

Moose blinked…and said, quietly. “Why don’t I think so?”

Crowley acted as the demon would act, dragging Moose closer, reaching up and knitting fingers into his hair, jerking his head down, taking his mouth, just short of violent—just short of tender.

Need…

(He remembered the rush of innocent blood and prayer and holy water, and someone willing to die for him…)

And before he could break it off, Moose kissed back.

It filled his world.

Gentle hands. Tender hands. A mouth hot and hungry and certain… For long seconds he melted into it, wrapped up in something he could not accept but could never refuse.

He swore into Sam’s mouth. He cursed and bit, nipping, nipping too hard, biting… He felt his fingers claw. He felt his hungers rise.

He was Crowley, King of Hell, master of torments. No one left his bed unmarked…

He pulled back. “You bastard…” He made himself calm. “No. Sorry, Beanpole. No can do. You’ve got the wrong target—as usual.” He turned his back, trying to hide the shake in his hands, the tears trying to creep, the hunger Sam had roused—and the brutal edge that marked everything for Crowley. He was a man who knew how to give pain—and take it.

Sam grabbed his elbow. Spun him. Bent over his, this time deadly and dangerous. He bit Crowley’s ear—bit it! He hissed, wild and filthy and mean as a rattlesnake.

“I’m not innocent. I have not been innocent in…” he stopped, then went on, saying, “How do you figure time in hell, Crowley? How do you reckon time in the cage with Lucifer? Four of us went in and only we two survived it. What do you think I learned in Lucifer’s hands?” His fingers tracked Crowley’s body, found pressure points, dug hard, driving against nerves. “How long was I there?”

Crowley, caught between agony and ecstasy, swore. He shook his head. He managed to gasp out, “Don’t…know.”

“Centuries?”

“Uh…”

“You have no idea what I can do.”

Crowley was beginning to guess, though. It hurt—and felt like heaven. He fought—and was overborn. Moose was too big. Moose was too strong. Moose was too determined—and Crowley, to his own joy and shame, was too depraved to want to win this round. Not when Moose was making losing so glorious. “You can’t,” he snarled, knowing that the challenge would only turn it into a dare.

Sam Winchester took him down. Took him apart. The kitchen was full of tools, full of toys, full of delicate precision instruments that could be bent to unfamiliar tasks. They fought together, swearing, squirming, leaving faint, delicate traceries of blood on the tile floor.

It hurt—but Crowley had not know how to feel good without pain for as long as he’d been alive—and he had no ability at all to resist such gentle pain, such tender, carefully meted out agony, such softness balancing the hurt.

Sam Winchester—hundreds of years Lucifer’s chew-toy. His apprentice. Lucifer’s magnum opus…All the Winchester sweetness turned to the blend of pain and desire.

Crowley cried, and clung, and begged, and fell at last exhausted, clutching Moose close to him as he muttered, “No. No more, dammit. Not now.” He swore a long, vicious string of oaths, then pulled Sam close, and hung on, unable to let go.

Later—minutes or hours, he wasn’t sure—he realized Sam clung as tightly to him, crying.

He was Crowley. He had no tenderness of words that was not poisoned by his life. He did have silence—though—the silence of a little boy afraid and longing for a love he never got. He waited.

Sam hung on, face hidden in the turn of Crowley’s shoulder.

Crowley waited. Crowley was used to measuring time against eternity.

“You took it,” Sam gasped at last.

Crowley shrugged, and said, dryly, “I’ve taken worse than you, Sunshine.” He didn’t say, “But never better….”

Sam sighed and leaned into his now-lover. “I didn’t think anyone could bear me.”

Crowley, knowing too much of Lucifer, nodded, and managed to say the one thing that sealed it.

“I never thought I would find anyone who could hurt me enough without hurting me.”

The shivered together.

It was an imperfect perfection, Crowley thought, wryly. A wild perversion of the despair Hell’s torment was supposed to produce. But there they were—two scarred veterans of hell’s evil and heaven’s indifference, needing love—needing pain.

Who else would they ever have?


End file.
